I am a bestselling author and a freelance journalist who concentrates on man’s struggle to keep the state in balance with the American dream. My latest book is The Future of the Gun. I am also the author of The Ultimate Man's Survival Guide. My website is www.frankminiter.com. I am a former senior editor at Outdoor Life and a former executive editor for American Hunter (an NRA magazine). I still write for the NRA's publications and I am a "field editor" for American Hunter. This is a purely gratuitous title, but one I'm proud of, as I am a life member of the NRA. I mention all this because Media Matters has been saying I'm secretly an "NRA employee" to attack my credibility on the gun issues. When they can't handle the facts they attack the messenger.

Why Even The NRA Is Blitzing Sen. Richard Lugar

NRA-ILA Executive Director Chris Cox told me, “We haven’t engaged in many primary elections but I have to tell you, this decision was easy. Richard Mourdock is a strong supporter of the Second Amendment and Lugar is not. Lugar got his ‘F’ rating from the NRA the old fashioned way, he earned it.”

To put this in perspective Cox said, “Senator Harry Reid actually has a better record of protecting the Second Amendment than Senator Lugar.”

Cox said Lugar’s “contempt for gun owners in Indiana was made plain when he voted to confirm both Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court. Neither justice believes the Second Amendment of the U.S. Bill of Rights is an individual right. In fact, if they get a fifth anti-gun vote in the Supreme Court both would likely vote away our individual right to bear arms.”

The NRA, despite popular belief, hasn’t historically been shy about backing the pro-Second Amendment candidate in a race, even when that candidate is a Democrat. For example, in 2008 the NRA mailed flyers to let members know Kirstin Gillibrand (D-NY) had an “A” rating from the NRA. She subsequently won reelection to the U.S. House of Representatives—many say because of the NRA mailers.

Some point out that Gillibrand, who is now a U.S. senator, has since flipped on her support of gun rights; as a result, they say this backfired on the NRA. The NRA, nevertheless, is sticking to its guns. They’ve come to the conclusion they need to give clear ratings to all candidates, regardless of party. The NRA argues that if they used a more nebulous conservative test they’d lose the support of Democrats and “moderate” Republicans who are pro-gun rights. If this happened they’d lose their majority of support in Congress and then would lose gun-rights battles. Like the Tea Party, they believe holding to core principles isn’t just right, but also makes political sense in the long run.

In fact, an NRA ad says (while showing a photo of Lugar and President Obama together): “Over 36 years in Washington, Dick Lugar has changed. He’s become the only Republican candidate in Indiana with an F-rating from the NRA.”

What all of this means is the NRA and other conservative groups don’t agree with former Senator Rick Santorum that “sometimes you take one for the team” by allowing even your principles to be negotiable.

That kind of clarity is what’s cutting right through rhetoric and forcing politicians to keep their promises or else. While Grover Norquist has etched a line in granite on taxes, the NRA has done the same thing over the Second Amendment.

Politicians who prefer to blow on the Machiavellian winds of public opinion are baffled by this you’re-with-us-or-you’re-not attitude. Lugar, for example, seems almost as confused as Senator Arlen Specter was before his 2010 primary loss. Speaking with reporters in Washington, D.C., last month Lugar even seemed unsure as to whether the Tea Party is a good or bad thing. When the Weekly Standard asked, “Do you think the movement has been a positive for the Republican Party?”

Lugar said, “I’ll wait until….”

As Lugar paused, the Weekly Standard reporter tried to help him: “Until you’ve won your primary?”

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Moudock is bought and paid for by the Koch Brothers so they can havce another operative in Congress that follows their orders. The Tea Party is unfortunately a reservoir of anti-Obama hatred that is being manipulated with huge budgets coming from a few wealthy sources like the Koch Brothers. Rhey are not interested in the GOP they are interested in taking this country back to 19th Century bare-knuckle capitalism. Their ignorant and blind and mostly working class followers are mere puppets in the game.

You paint with a very broad brush there and your comment is full of unsubstantiated vitriol. I’ll point out that your type of comment is a systemic problem with politics lately. Few actually verify what they are told, and fewer speak out against the propaganda spouted by the left, right and, especially, the middle. So when any party has the loudest voice, people start believing what they hear as truth.

It’s about money, not ideology. Ideology is manipulated by the rising plutocracy to serve their own economic interests. Democracy in America is in crisis, not the economy. If Americans had more respect for the idea of “America” things would be different.

Our culture is in decline. It is in decline because Americans have lost their national pride and magnaminous spirit that made this country great. Partisan, unachievable ideologies have replaced our willingness to work together for the greater good with factionalized cynicism, creating a perpetual state of “irreconciliable differences.” “All for one and one for all” is no more than an epitaph describing the promise of what America once was . . .

We are no longer one nation moving forward. The Pledge of Allegiance today is a hollow promise — words uttered meaninglessly without regard for how they have sustained us and lifted us out of previous decades of crises.

Amen, thanks for pointing this out. Some people seem so baffled as to why the Republicans are in an anti-bipartisanship mood. It’s because that’s never worked for us in the past. All the “bipartisanship” we’ve had to date has resulted in the country moving to the Left quickly under Dem leadership and slowly under GOP leadership. That’s what we’re trying to change. Speaking for myself personally, I’m fine with bipartisanship but the goalposts need to change. Just one example, rather then cutting the rate of spending, let’s cut ACTUAL spending. Once we get the goalposts moved, I’m all for bipartisanship.

In 1976, when Sen Lugar was elected, the national debt was under $2 trillion and 36% of GDP.

Today, our national debt is over $15 trillion and almost 100% of GDP.

Sen. Lugar may have meant well, but he has been part of the bipartisan establishment that has pushed us to the brink of insolvency.

Worse, Sen. Lugar was a key player in Washington during the U.S. decline as the world leader after 1989.

Good intentions do not constitute a record – only success counts and failure should not be rewarded.

Ms. Noonan has paid her debts to Sen. Lugar with that WSJ article; now it is time for her to look at the big picture.

Ms. Noonan is one of the most articulate Republican writers; unfortunately, she is more Republican than conservative (and there is often a big difference between the two), and that bias comes through in much of her writing.

The biggest problem that candidates like Lugar and Spector had is that they have become representatives of Washington, DC rather than of Indiana or Pennsylvania. Many of us feel that people like this have been “captured by the system”.

If we are not going to implement term limits for legislators, then we the people need to be ready to vote out candidates who no longer are looking out for our interests!

Lugar is being attacked because the likes of the Koch Brothers, et al, want someone pliable to their interest, not an actual independent thinker. Mourdock is a useful idiot, emphasis on the idiot. This was a guy who, as treasurer, bought a bunch of Chrysler junk bonds just before it was about to go over the edge, and then sued to stop the bankruptcy proceedings. Had he won, the Indiana funds would have gotten LESS money than they got under the deal, AND there would have been big economic holes blown all over the state where Chrysler shut down. Mourdock is who H.L. Mencken was referring to when he said democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

Well it will be much easier to run a democrat against an extremist NRA teabagger than Lugar.

The debt issue is a Trojan horse for ideologues like the Koch Bros. Their pawns walk around saying how bad the debt but there isn’t one person that can articulate how the debt is bad. All they know is how to parrot some crap about losing freedom and how the constitution has been violated.